


And If You Go Chasing Rabbits

by wonkyjaw



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Angst, But definitely early, Canon-Typical Violence, Early FAHC, Fake AH Crew, Female Jack Pattillo, Gang Violence, Gen, High School, Not necessarily Pre-FAHC, Original Character Death(s), Teen Years, angsty narrator, slow to start
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 05:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11617281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonkyjaw/pseuds/wonkyjaw
Summary: Los Santos had never been an easy place to live, but when the Fakes appeared to have gone out of control, it only got harder.





	1. It's all fire and brimstone, baby

**Author's Note:**

> I had no clue where this was going when I started this. I just knew that I needed some High School Michael in my life and felt like it was an idea worth exploring, since it's not something I've read a lot of. 
> 
> I know the premise is weird, but I promise it's just slow to start and I'll update again as soon as I can!

Third period math had always been hell, but it had never been quite this hellish. She swore she could smell the literal fire and brimstone from where she was crouched behind an overturned desk. It was crap for coverage, but with her arms surrounding her head and her heartbeat pounding so loud it almost drowned out the hell raining down around them, it was the best she could do. 

Another explosion rocked the building and she swore this was why high schools in movies were all one level. The third floor was not the place you wanted to be when the action started going down. She glanced to her side, noticed her friend in a huddled mess. She could call out to her, but that might attract the gunman’s attention. The explosions she could deal with, the walking death in a leather jacket was another story.

To her other side was Michael Jones who looked like he was, without a doubt, having the time of his life. She groaned, taking in the way his eyes glistened in the half-light of the room, excited and not at all scared. She could feel the hot lick of flames coming closer. 

“I’m not a hero,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head, “I am not a hero.” 

Michael let out a loud whoop and she swore he was about to jump up and run right into the fray, but he stayed put, bouncing slightly even as he stayed crouched. She didn’t know why she cared, exactly, it wasn’t like they were friends. Far from it. He was the kind of popular asshole that was actually dangerous. A transplant from Jersey, he could take care of himself on the streets, something the parents on this side of town discouraged their kids from beginning to try. She scowled at him, it was probably his fault this hell was raining down on them anyway. 

She glanced back to her friend, pale even in the heat. She was relatively sure that the gunman wouldn’t be coming back, but he was known for being unpredictable. The whole gang was. She struggled to make sense of why they were there in the first place. The Fakes had no need for high schoolers, right? How could they?

“Andrea,” she yelled, motioning at her side for her friend to come closer to her. She had more cover and the coast seemed clear for now. Andrea ignored her, though. 

The building rocked again, some explosive hitting the outside. Their side of the building. Michael let out a manic sounding giggle. If she hadn’t spent the last month being pissed off in classes by him, she could have assumed that he was laughing out of nerves or fear. “Shut up, we could die,” she yelled, but then turned back to Andrea who was sobbing and shaking so hard it was visible even through the haze. 

“And?” Michael asked loudly. 

She glanced to the hall door and then back to the fire escape door behind them, trying to decide which would be a better escape plan. The lockdown had happened at the very beginning of the period, she and Andrea had been early. It wouldn’t happen again. 

_This is the kind of thing the fire escape was made for, right?_ She thought, taking a deep breath and turning back around to Michael. As much as she abhorred the kid, she still didn’t want him to die, especially since he himself didn’t seem to care much. 

“If we want to get away from the Fakes we have to be smart, okay? Are you with me?” she asked and Michael stopped laughing, eyebrows knitting themselves together. 

“This isn’t the Fakes,” he said, confusion painting his features. He shook his head a little, opening his mouth to say words that none of them would ever get the chance to hear. An explosion, even closer, knocked the window out of the fire escape door, sending shards of glass flying throughout the room so loudly she swore she’d never hear clearly again. 

She pressed her fingers into her ears once the impact had passed, rethinking the fire escape. It was getting harder to breathe, though, and hot air rises so it was only going to get worse. They needed to get out. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, “What do you know?” 

But Michael wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, instead looking just past her. She turned quickly, some softness in his gaze worrying her. 

She started screaming before she really knew what she was looking at. She didn’t think before she stood, she just stood and she moved. Thoughtlessness wasn’t exactly the word for what she was feeling, though. It was more like an overabundance of thoughts all so deafening and overlapping that none of them were intelligible. The most prominent of these thoughts were _No!_ and _Andrea!_

Michael was dragging her away from her friend and between the sight and the smoke inhalation she was weak enough to blindly follow him. He was saying things, loudly, but it was quiet to her, because to her it seemed as if the entire world had turned down it’s volume to this suffocating quiet. Her throat was sore and she knew she was screaming and at some point she managed to tear away from Michael’s grip and run back for Andrea. 

“We can’t leave her,” she screams, but Michael is taller and he is stronger and he is less addled by the sight of her dead friend so he grabs her tighter and pulls her away faster. 

“We have to,” he said, voice choked by the smoke that was making it difficult to navigate the halls and only getting thicker. “We have to. C’mon.” 

She tugs back, half-hearted, knowing deep down that he was right. At least it didn’t seem like this was the best day of his life anymore. He finally drags her down one flight of steps and towards another flight. This one is blocked, meant to send captives running the other direction, a trap. He turns, the joy replaced with panic, searching for another route of escape. 

Without thinking she starts pulling him, tugging towards an empty classroom. Michael lets go of her long enough to flip the teacher’s desk, but then pulls her down behind it beside him. 

“Why did you think it was the Fakes?” he asks loudly, ears still blown out from the sound of the explosion. 

She doesn’t answer, just breathes hard and stares, eyes wide, at the floor. All she can see is Andrea laying before her, the broken glass and little bits of twisted metal, quickly pooling blood. Andrea’s eyes, glassy and only dulling further. 

“Sawyer, c’mon, think,” he yells, shoving her harshly enough that her back hits the desk and she loses her balance. She just barely catches herself, leaning hard against her elbow. 

“The, uh, the Vagabond,” she says, trying her best not to stutter. She closes her eyes hard, thinking back to the moment she realized this day was going to absolute and utter shit. She and Andrea had almost made it entirely to the classroom when the man in the black skull mask rounded the corner. She’d pulled Andrea into the classroom just as the alarm bells had started to ring. “The shooter, it was the Vagabond, everybody knows the Vagabond runs with the Fakes now.” 

Michael is shaking his head, but Sawyer isn’t seeing it. She opens her eyes, trying to stop herself from taking breaths that sound so much like gasps. She sees the fire escape and thinks about running again, to a different room, one without windows, but yet another explosion rocks the building and she realizes it’s still on the other side. This fire escape might be their way out. 

She takes a deep breath, one last attempt to calm her breathing, and opens her mouth to tell Michael her plan, but he’s already started cursing. Loudly. Loud enough that her breath hitches in her throat and she worries that it’s already too late. Loud enough for the Vagabond to hear where they are and head their way. 

“Fucking son of a bitch,” Michael yells, his face turning a shade of red she’d seen him sport more than once. Yelling seemed to be as strong a hobby of his as starting fights. 

“Shut up,” Sawyer hisses, and when he’s still yelling she hisses it again and punches him as hard as she can in his shoulder. Her knuckles pop when they make contact and she shakes out her hand, wishing she’d aimed for something a little bit softer. She’s content with the way he flails to catch himself, stopping the stream of curses flying from his mouth.

“What the fuck,” he asks loudly after righting himself, then quieter, “What the fuck?” 

She points to the fire escape, the door already propped open. It was as inviting an invitation as she assumed they’d ever get. Michael edged towards the fire escape, peeking out and then cautiously moving out onto the platform. Sawyer couldn’t see him for just a few seconds and then suddenly he was back in the room, hand tight around her wrist, pulling her out with him. 

“Why are they here?” she asks and he ignores. “Why did you think it wasn’t the Fakes?” She can ask a million questions right now, but she only chances one more as they fly down the rickety steps of the fire escape, “Isn’t it always the Fakes?” 

They were basically celebrities. Hometown heroes. Some would even say gods. You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing something about the Fakes. What heist had they pulled this month? What stupid thing was this one or that one arrested for this time? What fucked up lifestyle video had they uploaded today? The Fakes hadn’t even been around for very long, the crew containing maybe three or four solid members, but Los Santos had grown too accustomed to having its criminals be granted sainthood.

Sawyer hated it. 

Every group of friends had at least one idiot who thought they could cut it as a new crew member for the Fakes and before the Fakes some other stupid criminal syndicate. It was something a lot of kids dreamed of in Los Santos. It was sickening. 

Michael was one of those kids. 

Sawyer and Michael didn’t stop until they hit an alley five blocks from the school. They could still hear the mayhem, but just barely over the sound of their own labored breaths. Sawyer’s heart pounded so heavily in her chest that she couldn’t even remember what a normal rhythm felt like. She leaned against the wall, hands on her knees. 

Michael let out a quiet laugh, throwing his head back to look up at the little sky he could see from between the two buildings. He spun a little, shaking off the adrenaline and letting loose a goofy grin. 

Sawyer slid down the bricks. “It doesn’t make any sense, they’re all about being idols. It doesn’t make sense.” 

“What?” Michael asks, the grin falling quickly from his face, remembering the broken body of that girl in the classroom. The one that had sent him into action. 

Sawyer shakes her head, letting it fall into her hands, trying to make herself small. “None of it makes sense,” and before she can stop herself she is crying. She can make out the shadow of Michael pacing awkwardly in front of her, dancing almost, and she shakes her head again, trying to choke back sobs that refused to be stopped. 

“Ahh,” Michael lets out a noise that somehow manages to be both a growl and a squeak. A car speeds past the entrance to their alley and he decides that he doesn’t have to be good at comforting her if he can be good at action. It’s not like there was anything he could do to bring her friend back, which, conceivably, was all this girl wanted anyway. 

“We probably should keep moving,” he states, holding out a hand to help her up. Sawyer ignores it, realizing that somewhere along the way she’d gotten a nice gash on her leg. She stands up and stumbles to the side a little, somewhat from the pain and somewhat from the sudden lack of adrenaline leaving her lightheaded. She pushed Michael away, not allowing him to help her. She’d already cried in front of him, she couldn’t stand to be seen as any weaker. 

“My house isn’t far,” she says, limping towards the other end of the alley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title song = The Mission by Puscifer. 
> 
> As of right now, all of the chapter titles are lyrics to songs on my FAHC playlist and are just, in general, good songs that should be listened to. 
> 
> Alternative title: "What do you know?"


	2. Today is but a rumor

Sawyer had ditched Michael in the kitchen, opting out of letting him help her clean up her leg and bandage it. She was also opting out of the hospital route. It would alert her dad to her injuries, for one, and the state of things seemed to strongly suggest that there would be worse injuries in the ER. She could handle a little scrape, right?

When she peeled her blood-stained jeans away from the gash on her thigh, though, it became apparent that she was millimeters from needing stitches. She hissed, running water through the tub faucet and letting it wash over her wound. When she’d decided on this course of action she hadn’t assumed it would be so painful. 

When it was cleaned and covered in a triple antibiotic, gauze, and a tightly wrapped ace bandage, she wrapped a towel around her waist in lieu of pants. She hoped Michael hadn’t left the kitchen, but she was a fan of precaution either way and had no intention of being caught pantsless.

She was throwing her T-shirt in the trash and pulling on a clean hoodie and pair of sweat pants when all hell seemed to break loose once again. 

“What the hell are you doing in my kitchen, son?” 

Sawyer groaned, limping as quickly as she could towards where she’d left Michael. She’d assumed her dad wouldn’t be coming home soon, preoccupied with the death and destruction happening at the school. 

“Officer Sawyer, long time no see,” Michael said. Sawyer could hear the smirk on his voice before she’d even rounded the corner. 

“That’s Captain,” her father stated gruffly. He had his hand wrapped around Michael’s arm firmly, but Michael just smirked up at him defiantly. It looked like he was about to start yelling at the boy again when his eyes caught Sawyer in the doorway. 

“What the hell is this delinquent doing in my kitchen, Annabelle?” her father asked her. 

Sawyer raised her shoulders, “He was with me when the school got attacked.” She hoped reminding him of the very recent tragedy would derail him. 

“You’re hanging out with delinquents now?” He let go of Michael’s arm nonetheless and Michael sat back down at the table, glancing between the father and daughter. She couldn’t tell if he wanted to bolt or grab popcorn.

“This is seriously what you’ve decided to focus on?” Sawyer asked. She knew that this was likely just an easy distraction for him, but there was a lot more on her mind than who she’d managed to escape the school with. She swallowed hard, wondering how she was going to explain to her dad that Andrea was dead. 

Her father sighed, letting a little of his own pride falter a little. “We cleared the building, but you weren’t there,” he said, like it was an explanation. He stared at his daughter as if there was more he wanted to say, but he just couldn’t think of how. 

Sawyer nodded, then like ripping off a bandaid, “Andrea’s dead.” 

Without a word her father moved forward to embrace her. Of course, searching the building, he’d had moments of doubt about her survival, but without finding her he could pretend she hadn’t been there at all. 

Michael took the cover of their hug to dart silently out of the room. He’d been on the bad side of Officer, no, Captain Sawyer too many times to count in the short while he’d been living in Los Santos. He didn’t need any particularly good excuse to want to get the hell out of his kitchen. He figured Sawyer would have enough on her plate without her father believing that she was mingling with juvenile delinquents. Besides, he suddenly had some particularly important business to attend to. 

Sawyer noticed him slip out, but didn’t say a word, recognizing it as a kind gesture above all else. She made a mental note to thank him later for being able to jump into action when she couldn’t. Maybe keeping her father off of Michael’s ass for the time being could be thanks enough. 

\--- 

There was no school for a week, but a week was all the school board would spare. 

“Tragedy hits us often and, as a city, I’d like to think we are particularly good at standing back up again,” the mayor had said during a public TV announcement, fiddling with the cards he’d been given to read. He’d read a list of all the teachers and students who had been found dead, those missing, those injured. 

_Those documented as injured_ , she corrected, trying to ignore the sharp throbbing in her leg. When he got to Andrea’s name, Sawyer had turned off the television. Andrea had been the only friend that Sawyer had made in this new school. In her old school, the public not private and therefore too shady for those with money school, all of her friends had been upperclassmen anyway. They’d floated off, ghosts, after graduation. She’d get a text after a tragedy making sure she was still alive, if she was lucky, and then nothing for months. 

The first day back in class the student body was moved to the community college, a lot of the college students had gone home and fled the city when they realized that maybe a school wasn’t the safest place to be after all. At least they had some sense. In response the college had cancelled classes, almost like they could fool someone into thinking that the cancellations had happened before the fleeing. It always amused Sawyer, the way that people always tried relentlessly to save face even when it wasn’t necessary.

She floated through class, signs printed on thin paper pointing students where to go, teachers half-heartedly getting through their lectures. No one got homework. Sawyer figured the no homework thing was a consolation prize for making it out alive. She hoped it would last. She doubted she’d be able to force herself to actually do any of it should any be assigned. 

After classes, Sawyer floated home. She sat in front of the TV and listened to the latest theories on the why’s, the what’s, and the who’s. She wanted to scream at the TV. It was the Fakes. It was obviously the Fakes. It was always the Fakes. She couldn’t have been the only one to have seen the Vagabond roaming the halls.

“Just because he was wearing a leather jacket and a mask doesn’t mean that it was him.” 

Sawyer jumped and spun around. Michael was standing there, a tan leather jacket slung over his shoulders despite it being fall and still a relatively decent temperature outside. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, getting to her feet, wondering if there was a good weapon nearby. Her father was a cop, but he was a good one, she knew she wouldn’t find anything just lying around. She ran through the different types of self-defense she could use, which ones she was good at, which ones were rusty. 

“Calm down, Sawyer, I was just swinging by to check up on you,” he said, holding up a hand and laughing. 

“You weren’t in class,” she shot back. And he hadn’t been - not since classes had started up again. 

“No one should be,” he stated, narrowing his eyes. 

“It was him, Michael, I saw him,” Sawyer stated, crossing her arms over her chest. 

He just shook his head, though, and sighed. He softened his gaze, “I’m glad you’re okay.” 

She thought about asking why, but instead just glared. After a second or two of this impasse Michael sighed and waved, making his way back out. She thought about asking why he was so sure, but realized she really didn’t want to know the answer anyway. 

When she turned back to the TV she couldn’t keep the scream from leaving her mouth. In an instant Michael had rounded back around the corner, back into the living room, asking loudly what was wrong, what had happened, his hand suspiciously close to his waist in a pose her father had made plenty of times when unsure if he should actually reach for his gun. Sawyer could only point at the screen in horror. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand, trying to comprehend what was happening on the screen in front of her.

There the Vagabond was, or some shitty recording of him anyway. There was no sound, just the Vagabond pacing, back in forth, in front of the camera, which was actually not even focused on him. Instead, the camera was focused on a girl. A teenage girl. 

“Is that Jaime Walters?” Michael asked, incredulous. 

Sawyer could only nod. 

“And no one mentioned she was missing?” 

She shook her head. 

Across the screen were the flashing words: COME ONE, COME ALL. IT’S FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE. The Vagabond waved a metal bat around a bit, looking as if he was going to hit Jaime and then backing off like it was a game. Sawyer had heard his demented laughter enough in the past to imagine it now even though the video was a soundless loop.

“She’s the, uh, she’s the mayor’s daughter, right?” Michael asked, pointing at the screen and then rubbing his chin like this required more thought that it actually did. 

Sawyer nodded. 

YOU’VE GOT TIL DAWN. 

Clichéd, but menacing still the same, which seemed fitting enough for the Vagabond, though the Fakes had a tendency to keep him more in check ever since he’d started running with them. Sawyer sat back down on the couch, mouth still hanging open. She couldn’t stop gaping at the screen as the short video played on repeat. It was so short it could have been a gif. 

“He didn’t mention his own daughter was missing?” 

Sawyer shakes her head.

“Wow,” he says and she can hear that he’s almost laughing again, obviously not as struck by the situation as she is, “I guess we know now what it was they wanted. Not that it was the Fakes, because it wasn’t.” 

“How are you so fucking sure?” she asked, suddenly shaking herself out of her stupor with the sheer force of her anger. “How can you be sure that it wasn’t them? They aren’t saints, you know.” She hated how often she had to remind people that they were a gang, murderers, criminals. Not saints.

Michael shrugged, glancing at the clock on the wall. 

“I just know,” he said, and then, “But I better get going before daddy dearest comes home.” He left the room, Sawyer still silently fuming, before she could even start to unravel all of the different ways she was pissed off at him. 

“Asshole,” she yelled, but then turned off the TV and went to the basement where her father’s workout room was. She needed to punch something. She needed to punch something hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How - The Neighbourhood
> 
> Perfect for that high school angst feel... mmm.


	3. Another line without a hook

After the Jaime incident Sawyer avoided the media. She avoided Michael. One of these was much easier than the other since the boy she swore was fire incarnate refused to actually show up for classes. Not that she noticed. Or cared.

She continued to float through school and didn’t bother pretending that everything was fine like everyone else. After a while they were relocated back to their building, even though reconstruction was still underway. The attack had done a larger amount of damage than anyone had originally thought it had. Luckily, the school had some rich patrons. The mayor hadn’t been wrong. Los Santos had its way of standing back up again and it had a lot to do with money.

Jaime never reappeared. Sawyer was too afraid to actually look into what happened. She wanted to believe that she’d been found and simply whisked from the city to somewhere safer. She avoided television and radio. She avoided talking to people too, which drove her father crazy, worried that this tragedy would forever stunt her social growth.

“Annabelle,” he says, snapping in front of her face. They’re sitting at the kitchen table pretending to eat dinner. Her father had actually bothered to cook for once, which meant it was spaghetti night. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she didn’t actually like his spaghetti, it was too sweet and reminded her of the dessert spaghetti monstrosity from Elf. “I asked if you wanted to come visit the station, visit Deacon and some of the others,” her dad stated and Sawyer thought about the prospect of seeing old family friends, her father’s friends, but then shrugged. “It’s like you’re on another planet.”

Sawyer shrugs again, “Maybe I want to be,” and twirls noodles around her fork. She wonders if she should tell him now. _Maybe we can try meatloaf next?_ She shudders at the thought of a sweet meatloaf. It was probably better to just let only the one meal be ruined. Most nights she would just cook something herself or they would order in. Her father taking it upon himself to cook was a rare occurrence.

“You see that Jones kid recently?” he asks and suddenly the point of this dinner becomes abundantly clear to Sawyer. She’s never enjoyed being treated like she’s in the interrogation room with the good cop, but it’s what her father always resorts to when he wants information on her life.

She sighs and pushes her plate away. “I’m not doing this, Dad.” She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. She imagines she’s sitting across the table from him in that sleek and dark room with those two way mirrors. She can see why Michael wasn’t a fan. Her dad could be relentless. A dog with a bone, sometimes burying it to come back twice as hard later, all under the guise of innocent interest.

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” he said, sighing. He watched her intently from where he sat across the table.

“I can look out for myself,” Sawyer insisted loudly. Something in her gut pulled her to stand, to be angry, and the chair scraped the ground loudly due to the abrupt movement. “I’m not a child anymore.”

Her father crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair, following her with his eyes. “You’re still _my_ child,” he said quietly.

Sawyer looked at the floor, tightening the way her arms were crossed. “Well, can’t you just trust that you taught me well enough?” She felt bad, thinking about the mayor and his daughter, Andrea’s parents. Sometimes it’s just some fucked luck that puts a person in the wrong place at the wrong time. She knows he has every right to worry.

Sawyer didn’t wait to hear her father’s response, running back up to her room.

Her fingers stalled over the keys on her laptop. Google was open and willing to tell her everything she’d missed and avoided. She owed them that much, right? She felt the tightening in her chest that was starting to become uncomfortably familiar, though, and the tight feeling traveled its way up to her throat making it harder to breathe.

Sawyer groaned, holding in a yell of frustration, as she slammed her laptop back closed. She pushed herself harshly away from her desk, knocking over a jar of pens and pencils, and threw herself onto her bed. She fought the urge to thrash and throw a tantrum and eventually just curled herself into a ball tight enough to make her muscles ache. She cried into herself, frustrated and angry. She cried for Andrea and Andrea’s parents and the parents of all the other children who didn’t make it back home.

You couldn’t live in Los Santos and be a stranger to loss.

But that didn’t stop the angry and lonesome feeling from swelling within her. How could she be so selfish and hide from it all? How could she pretend that it never happened? The death has to be acknowledged in order for it to be mourned, and didn’t Andrea deserve to be mourned?

When Sawyer wakes up the next morning she is under her covers and her lights are all off. She glances at the clock and wonders if it’s too late to apologize to her dad. It was hard to remind herself that she wasn’t the only one who’d lost somebody.

 ---

Sawyer decides that it’s time to face the world again, one baby step at a time, and that her first baby step will be to stop and get coffee after class. She does this every day after class and after a week she stops ordering to go and starts staying. She gets her coffee and sinks deep into one of the couches that line the walls. She gets something different every day; this isn’t meant to just become a new routine.

            Two weeks into this new tradition filled with blatantly ignoring every other patron of the café, her ears are met with an accent she didn’t often hear in Los Santos, despite its high population of rich assholes.

            “I don’t get why it’s so important to you,” he said, soft British accent lilting over the syllables with a distinct lack of grace. “She’s just a stranger, let it go, yeah?”

            Despite her interest being piqued, Sawyer tries not to listen in to the rest of the conversation, but the next accent she heard made it impossible. She sank as far into the couch as she could. Was there any way to completely disappear?

            “It’s not that simple,” Michael says, his voice loud even when he’s being quiet.

            Sawyer keeps her eyes on her assignment, the first chapters of Conrad’s _Heart of Darkness_. She reads the same sentence over and over, attempting to turn invisible through intense concentration. “Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.” She reads it over and over again, applies meaning to every other word, tunes out the conversation. She flips the page but goes back, realizing she’s not taking in any real meaning from the words she’s reading.

            _Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches_ …

            “Sawyer?” That Jersey accent cuts through every wall that Sawyer’s concentration had built. “Long time, no see,” he said. Sawyer looked up at him, glaring, ignoring his friend who seemed rather uninterested in her anyway. Michael shifted his feet, his face curiously closed off. He was nervous.

            “What?” she asked, even though the more prominent question in her mind was: _What’s wrong?_ She’d had a few moments of weakness since the attack on the school where she earnestly thought the boy might be her only friend.

            “I didn’t see you over here,” he says and she watches him reach up to rub the back of his neck. _He wants to know if you heard him_ , she thinks.

            “I didn’t see you either,” she responds, pouring as much annoyance into her words as she can. It’s easier to hate each other than face the memory of the only real thing they had in common. It was easier to hate him than try to reconcile their very differing opinions on the Fakes. She looks back to her book. Starts the line over.

            Michael sits down across from her and his friend sits next to him. Sawyer sighs and looks up at him, wordlessly setting the book down, spine up, on the small table between them. Every action is meant to clue him in on her annoyance.

            “How have you been?” Michael asked, no longer fidgeting.

            “Who’s your friend?” she asks back, annoyed by his relaxation.

            “Gavin,” his friend responds, holding his hand out over the coffee table for her to shake. He takes his hand back and leans easily back into the couch when she makes no move to shake his hand. He lets one of his arms drape behind where Michael is sitting, the other resting against his own knee, seemingly unperturbed by her rudeness. He can’t be much older than Michael is, but he holds himself like he’s reached a much more sophisticated age. First of all, what kind of seventeen-year-old wears a button up? Who even owns gold sunglasses?

            Sawyer turns her attention back to Michael, who has lost just a small amount of his confidence. She shakes her head. “What are you doing here?” _This is my spot_ , she implies.

            Michael shrugs, holding his hands up as a show of innocence. “Came for the coffee,” he explained, picking his coffee back up from the table and taking a small sip.

            “Stayed for the company,” Gavin said lazily, a small grin at the corner of his lips.

            “You don’t strike me as a coffee type,” she says dryly. She needs to know if they were following her, even though logically she knows it would make no sense. “Neither of you do,” she adds, shifting her gaze to Gavin.

            He points at his cup, specifically to the paper tag hanging out from beneath the plastic lid. “Tea. It’s shite, but it’s tea.”

            She wants to know how and why they know each other. The only other British person she knows of in Los Santos works for the Fakes. Michael was a little too easy to disagree and fight with her about the Vagabond being inside the school. She glanced between the two of them, sizing them up, wondering if they could get away with trying to kidnap her, if she was wrong to automatically assume he was a Fake.

            She wondered why anybody would want to kidnap her anyway.

            “Mine’s basically hot chocolate,” Michael added laughing, even though an awkward amount of time had passed in silence. “So you’re right, I guess.”

            Sawyer nods stiffly, still trying to size them up, thinking through the moves her dad had taught her. Self-defense fused with whatever the academy had taught him. She wasn’t slow.

            “Hey, calm down, okay?” Michael said, letting some of his trademarked anger through, dropping his brief laughing pretense.

            “I’m not slow,” she said through gritted teeth, glancing between the two. She suddenly wished she hadn’t avoided all of the spectacle so much. She wondered if someone who followed it closely would be able to identify all of the Fakes by sight. How many times had their faces seen news feeds? Was Gavin even bothering to hide?

            “I know,” Michael said, but there was a large question mark hanging over his words. She felt herself clenching her fists, arms held tight against her thighs. She imagined she could feel her scar there, beneath her jeans, an ugly white and gnarled thing. “I know,” he repeated, leaning closer, voice lowered. There was still a threat there, to Sawyer. She wondered what he would do, what he would try to do, should she raise her voice. Her father’s voice echoes through her head, telling her she needs to play it safe.

            “I don’t want to be a part of this,” she says, putting her rage to use by packing her homework back into her backpack, trying to keep it out of her voice. “A part of _any_ of this,” she repeats, clarifying, pointing between the two boys who by all means should be too young for this gang shit.

            “What shit?” Gavin asks, leaning forward, like he knows exactly what shit she’s referring to. Cheeky seems to be one of his more dominant personality traits. Sawyer scowls at him while she shoves _Heart of Darkness_ back into her bag, not bothering to mark the page. Gavin’s smirk grows into a grin and he glances to Michael who seems to be scrambling to find the words he needs to keep Sawyer there and keep her calm. There was a purpose to coming here, to finding her, to talking to her.

            “There’s a list,” Michael blurts, but then scowls at the table between them.

            Sawyer pauses, barely an inch off the couch. She doesn’t look at him, but she knows he is aware that he has her attention.

            He doesn’t say anything right away and when Sawyer finally sits back down and looks back up, arms crossed tight against her chest, she sees that Gavin is glaring over at his friend, who has gone red in the face. Michael clenches and unclenches his fists, glaring down at them like it had been his hands to betray him rather than his mouth. Sawyer wonders how often he hates just how explosive he gets – how often it gets him in trouble.

            “What list?” she finally spits out.

            Michael shakes his head, a hard and mechanical motion.

            “The one he was not supposed to mention under any circumstances,” Gavin says, tilting his head to side reminding Sawyer of an angry bird. She takes note of the fact that they were there under orders.

            Sawyer sits and waits for another thirty seconds before groaning and standing quickly. She slings her bag over her shoulder, glares down at the two boys sat before her, and then storms wordlessly out of the store.

            She walked fast and angry all the way home, annoyed. She was annoyed because this was all confirmation that the only person she even occasionally thought of as a friend was now most definitely a part of one of the scariest gangs her city had to offer. She was annoyed that their almost-but-not-really friendship had led to him trying to drag her into that world with him.

            More importantly, though, she was annoyed with herself. She was annoyed that he’d managed to nearly convince her to listen, that he’d drawn her in so easily. She could see herself there beside him, alongside the people who had taken both Andrea and her sanity from her. People who had taken so many things from so many people. She felt like retching at the thought of it and how, against all reason, the offer was still attractive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance


	4. There's you in everything I do

            Sawyer sighed, her laptop open once again. Her fingers paused over the keys then tapped away without abandon. She didn’t stop until the page was filled, and then a second page, and then she realized that the time had come. She was going to have to actually do research. She was going to have to open that web browser and type in those words she dreaded reading about, but she was tired of tiptoeing around herself. _Baby steps_ , she reminded herself.

            Sighing she opened a browser and typed in “The Cockbites.”

            She scans over the article titles that pop up and sighs, wondering why she’d taken this approach to her paper. She could have easily bullshitted something about something a lot less detrimental to her mental health. The assignment had been to write four pages on an event important to your family’s history, recent or ancient. She cursed the existence of Heritage class and how prideful rich people were of where they came from.

            She lays her head against her desk for a second, reminding herself that this was easier than trying to talk to her dad about his family history. It was easier to crank out four pages about a history that she already knew the narrative of.

            _My mother was a journalist._

            Sawyer rocks her head against the cool wood of her desk.

            _My mother was Alice. My mother fell down the rabbit hole._

            Sighing she picks herself back up, clicks the first link and starts reading. She imagines her mother reading the same article; she imagines feeling that insatiable pull that allows a mother to leave her family. Sawyer had always imagined her mother being dragged away by the mighty waves that lapped against the shores of Los Santos, but in all of her nightmares her mother wore a peaceful expression as she allowed the waves to pull her alone.

            _My mother was obsessed with her subject, immersing herself so deeply that, in the end, she just disappeared completely.._

            Sawyer digs into The Cockbites, the history of Los Santos, the history of gangs and cults, Jonestown. She ends with a subject she hates, the Fakes. Always the Fakes.

            The Cockbites had been a gang that was largely popular when Sawyer was much younger, when her parents were both young, new transplants to the city. Los Santos was in a constant need of police and her father was in constant need of a job. He’d promised Alice, his wife, that this would be the last move. He got assigned dangerous beats and Alice worried, putting her journalistic instincts to use, researching the dangers of their new city. The Cockbites were the kingpins, they owned Los Santos. They were a constant threat. They were tumultuous. In the end, they disappeared.

            And so did Alice.

            Alice immersed herself so completely that she quickly began to learn things that no civilian should ever know. The Cockbites weren’t led by a man, it was led by many. Burns, Hullum, and Ramsey had seemed to be the most prominent, though there were others, like Heyman and Sorola. The crew was cocky – cocky enough to use their real names instead of pseudonyms or clever monikers. Like many of the greats, though, it seemed like this hubris was what ultimately brought them down.

            They grew too fast, had too much of a monopoly of power. They had too many differing opinions. Some had their morals and others had none. They had a constant stream of cops attempting to take them down and it was usually as simple as looking them up by name and waiting for any miniscule mistake.

            Infighting fractured their alliance that at one point had seemed almost familial.

            They broke down and died off, ran off, or paid off their sins.

            Sawyer had a theory that her mother had fucked off with them, but she had no proof outside of a sinking gut feeling. Her mother had known too much, had spent too much time reading and thinking and writing. Maybe her mother had run out of facts to read in safety. Maybe her mother had found an in into the Cockbites and had stayed, caught up in the rush that was living the history she was trying to write.

            Sawyer remembers strange men in their little apartment while her father was out on stake-outs. Sawyer remembers her mom hugging her tightly, trying to explain in a way that five-year-old Sawyer could understand. Sawyer remembered her mom disappearing at night, forgetting to make her lunch for school in the morning, her father forfeiting over cash that he didn’t have so she could eat. They’d been so poor then, her mother having lost her job in her obsession and her father never seeming able to get anywhere on the force.

            Sawyer avoided pictures, afraid of seeing the destruction, afraid she’d recognize a face, but she still managed to see one. A much more recent analysis and breakdown of Los Santos’ history of crime. It ended with an explanation of the Fakes, a shortened version of the Fake Cockbites.

            “Reportedly, and, yes, I mean reportedly, because he actually had the stones to do an interview, Ramsey, the leader of these Fakes, had come up with the name The Fake Cockbites in an attempt to be funny, but just grew to resent it, which is why the crew had a rebranding as just _The Fakes_.” Sawyer read the words aloud, disbelieving. They honestly thought they were real celebrities. How were they not in jail? If Michael ever resurfaced she planned on asking him, loudly and with much force. “Ramsey, of ex-Cockbite fame, said he was still in the process of putting together what right now seems to be a very ragtag group of criminals. He’d started with an old friend who is simply known as Jack. She seems, to the public eye, to be primarily the pilot and driver. His second recruit, who is referred to by Ramsey as The Brit and by reporters and police as The Golden Boy, is a young British man. Ramsey mentioned, in an interview, having his eyes set on a few locals, but refused to say anything further on the subject. It seems his goal is to resurrect what the Cockbites once were and he seems to be doing a decent job of it already. Since the Fakes emerged, other gangs have fallen back and drug warfare seems to be mostly on the outs.”

            Sawyer kept reading what little of the article there was left. It was old, old enough to leave out another new and important recruit. The Vagabond. He was some mysterious masked murderer who had wandered into Los Santos one day only to find it was his ideal hunting grounds. He was good at what he did and he was relentless, but that was all the media could ever pick up on. Well, that and angry blue eyes behind his black skull mask. Ramsey had also managed to recruit some deadshot kid who called himself Brownman and hated being the public eye just as much as Sawyer hated seeing them in it.

            She glanced at the recommended reading and she allowed her anger to swell up when she realized that one of the recommended articles wasn’t an article at all, but a quiz: “Which Fake Are You?”

            She wanted to climb onto the nearest rooftop and scream that they weren’t celebrities. That they were criminals who needed to be apprehended. That they were dangerous murderers, no matter how much they might like to play Robin Hood.

            She finished writing her paper and sent it to the printer downstairs in her dad’s office. When she came back up she realized she’d left the page of recommended articles up on her laptop. Raising an eyebrow, she gave in to her curiosity.

            She didn’t feel any better after her results told her she was most like Ramsey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I Bet My Life - Imagine Dragons (in general this makes me think of Jack & Geoff for some reason? But I gave up on trying to find better lyrics for this chapter title.)
> 
> Short, but background.


	5. don't threaten me with a good time

Time moves quickly when you don’t pay attention to it. Sawyer focused on handing in homework assignments, focused on living hour to hour instead of day to day or week to week, focused on keeping her head down. She thought she was ready to hear what had actually happened with Jaime, whether she was alive and in some protection program her father set up or if someone had taken the Fakes up on their offer. _First come, first serve_. Sawyer shuddered, rolling a piece of overly fried Orange Chicken around in her rice, and realized she didn’t have the heart to hear it.

            Across the table and the Chinese take-out containers, her father cleared his throat.

            “Hey, you have any plans for tonight?” He asks the words like he had real hope that she would say that she did, in fact, have plans.

            Sawyer sighed and rolled her eyes, popping the piece of chicken into her mouth. She obviously didn’t.

            The chair creaked when her father shifted his weight on it. His fork clinked against his plate as he set it down. Something in his bones popped when he sat up straighter, frustration painting his features as he stared his daughter down. The room, all in all, was much too quiet. Sawyer glanced up, but refused to further acknowledge the change.

            “It’s been five months, Annabelle,” he states and Sawyer is startled when she realizes he’s right. She forces herself to finish chewing her bite, narrow her eyes.

            “Wow, time really does fly, huh?” she responds dryly, looking down to push another piece of chicken around the outskirts of her plate.

            Her father shakes his head, “No, not today.” There’s a certain resolve in the way that he sets his jaw, glaring over at his daughter, it forces her to look him in the eyes. “You’re having plans, I’m done watching you sit there and mope.”

            “I have every right to be upset,” she says with every intention of sounding angry, but losing momentum before the words have even left her mouth. She doesn’t feel upset so much as cut off from the world. It’s how she prefers it – people die out there.

            He shakes his head again, picking up her plate and dumping its contents into the trash. She lets her fork fall onto the table, not caring that it’ll leave a sticky mess.

            “It’s been five months, you have to move on,” he says, letting the dirty dishes clatter into the sink. He starts packing up the left over containers, refusing to make eye contact with Sawyer.

            “I’m doing my homework. I stopped hanging out with _that Jones kid_ that you hate so much. I’m staying out of trouble. What more do you want from me?” she asks, standing up and crossing her arms. The anger was small, but it was back and it was present.

            Her father slams the fridge closed and Sawyer flinches back, fingernails digging into her arms. Her dad’s face falls, realizing he might need a less aggressive approach.

            “Listen,” he says, sighing, sitting back down in his seat at the table.

            Sawyer looks him in the eyes as a show of her willingness to be reasonable.  

            “I happen to know about a small party that no one is going to bother busting,” he said, looking off to the side, acknowledging a form of policing politics Sawyer didn’t often get to hear about. “You should go. Have fun. Be a kid.”

            Sawyer shrugged, “No thanks.”

            “Just go,” her dad insists, and then when Sawyer refuses to lose her resolve, raises her head higher, he adds, “for me.”

            “So,” Sawyer says, drawing the single syllable out, eyebrow raised, “what you’re saying is you want me, your only child, to go out and raise hell in one of the most dangerous cities you could have planted me in?” The angry fire seemed more amused than anything else.

            He rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying raise hell, but would it kill you to relax and have some fun?” He held his arms up in a shrug.

            “Why?” Sawyer asks, plenty happy to live the rest of her life in denial. She could read up on agoraphobia, it sounded particularly pleasing right about now. “Why do you want me to have fun so badly that you’re not busting a party? You love busting stupid teenage parties.”

            Her dad laughs, “First of all, it’s not getting busted for more reasons than just you. Believe it or not, you’re not the only person that was affected by the attack on the school. And second, I wouldn’t be the one busting it anyway, which takes out ninety percent of the fun of it.”

            “I guess that’s fair,” Sawyer says, allowing herself to laugh just a little, then sighs, remembering that she really had no choice in the matter, “How long are you going to keep me locked out of the house?”

            He checks his watch, “I’ll expect you back by midnight at the earliest.”

            Sawyer rolls her eyes, but goes up to her room to throw together what she’d need. She pulls a purse over her shoulder, despite her hatred for carrying bags. She threw her wallet and keys in, as well as a pocket knife that her father had gotten for her last Christmas at her request. He’d spent all of January training her how best to use it, how to use her short stature against an attacker. She glanced around the room, wondering what else could come in handy.

She dropped her cellphone into the purse, even though she’d hardly looked at it in months. Somehow Michael had gotten her number and had been texting her relentlessly ever since, asking for a chance to talk and explain and catch up.

            Okay, so maybe she had looked a little.

            She hadn’t had to really answer the texts, though, for the most part, because Michael had worked pretty hard to make himself a fixture in her life regardless of her consent. He’d made a habit of showing up at the coffee shop and as much as she hated to admit it, Sawyer took comfort in the boy’s presence. There would be weeks where he didn’t show up and somewhere in the middle of those weeks would be the murmurs of whatever heist the Fakes had pulled, which always reminded Sawyer all over again that she was supposed to hate Michael. She would avoid the coffee shop for a week or two then, fearing his presence might lull her back into a false sense of security. It was a cycle of absenteeism that neither of them truly enjoyed.

            Running out of ideas of what to bring she walks back down into the kitchen, where her dad is now washing the dishes. Exactly what she wished she was doing instead of preparing to go out and see stupid, drunk teenagers.

            “What do I need to bring with me?” she asks, taking the last drink out of her glass of water and picking up her fork from the table before transferring them to the sink.

            “Leave your wallet, but bring some cash just in case,” he mumbled, not raising his gaze from the dish he was scrubbing.

            Without asking any questions she took her wallet back out and set it down next to him on the counter. She pulled out a twenty and shoved it to the bottom of her bag. “It just feels like such a shame to waste all of this space,” she mentioned, stalling her departure.

            Her dad glanced back at her, while she played with all of the empty space inside her purse, light grin on her face. “Grab a bottle of water,” he said, then turned back to finishing the dishes.

            Sawyer rolled her eyes, but complied. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the pantry and then a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge. She shoved them into the purse, which was now successfully filled to an almost awkward capacity.

            “Any other words of wisdom?”

            “Get out,” her father said, laughing, pointing at the door with a soapy hand.

            “Alright, alright.” She opened the door and took one step out before turning around again, “I’d just like to point out that you have a skewed set of priorities.”

            “Go,” he reiterated, flicking suds at his daughter’s face.

            Reluctantly, she let the door close behind her and headed down the street.

            She checked her phone, opening Facebook for the first time in five months. She glances through her feed, trying to pinpoint whether this party was something she should actually go to. She cringed at the thought of so many spoiled teenagers raiding their parent’s liquor cabinets. Three statuses about the party later she decided she might as well try it, even if it sucked. She could always find a diner to chill out at until midnight if it ended up being too annoying to manage. Sighing, she started walking on the farthest edge of the sidewalk towards the houses that were impossibly expensive. Eventually she found herself outside of a two-story monstrous mansion that was bursting at the seams with some hip hop beat.

            She was already annoyed.

            She would never listen to her father’s stupid suggestions again.

            “Sawyer!” a voice called loudly. A tall boy with dark hair ushered her further into the yard. She didn’t necessarily recognize him, but he seemed familiar enough to believe that he was a classmate. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”

            “Me neither,” she mumbled to herself, allowing him to grab her arm and pull her into the fray that is the backyard. Mingling with the powerful scent of alcohol was chlorine and Sawyer wondered whether drunk teens and a pool were really a mix she wanted to be around. The boy laughed, taking in her expression, and she began to feel bad that she had no idea who he was. She assumed she was supposed to since he hadn’t bothered to introduce himself.

“Do a shot with me?” he asked, pulling her into the house through the back door. She allowed him to drag her into the kitchen, through crowds of dancing teenagers. The music was cranked so loud that Sawyer had to wonder if her ears had begun bleeding yet.

            She debated turning down the shot, leaving as quickly as she’d come, but he was already pouring the liquor. He handed the small glass to her and all she could think about was how her dad wanted her to have fun and sent her to this party, the least she could do was a few shots for his sake. She wasn’t giving the whole thing a fair chance if she didn’t, right?

            And it wasn’t like she’d never taken a shot before.

            She clinked the small glass against his as he holds it out for her and then knocks it back quickly. The harsh taste burns in her throat.

            “No salt, no lime?” she asked, barely loud enough to be heard. She’d watched him pour the shot and hadn’t even realized he was pouring tequila. Who actually drinks tequila?

            He laughed, shaking his head. “I know, we’re classless pigs.”

            It’s some kind of miracle, but Sawyer laughed. The warmth of the tequila takes a second to spread, but it does spread. Sawyer clenches her hands into fists and the extends her fingers, adjusting to the warmth of the room and the smile on her face. It felt nice to be reckless and ruin all the stress from her joints.

            “What would you say to another?” she asks. He grins back at her, takes the shot glass she holds out to him, and fills them both again. He holds him in one hand and points back to the backyard again wordlessly. Sawyer nods and follows him.

            “Thank you,” she says, and scrambles to figure out why he looks so familiar. All she needs is a name, the first letter of a name, a class schedule. She takes the shot from his hand and watches a small group of drunk classmates play chicken in the pool, still fully clothed. The boy clinks his shot glass against hers and they down the liquid in sync once more.

            Sawyer coughs this time and pulls open her purse for the Diet Coke she’d stored there. When she pulls it out the boy laughs. Ignoring him, she cracks open the can and takes a sip to chase away the strong tequila flavor. She offers it to the boy and he takes a swig too.

            He laughs again, shaking his head, taking in the game of chicken in front of them. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he says after a while, still grinning widely.

            Sawyer shakes her head, “I’m really sorry.”

            “It’s okay,” he says, shrugging. After a beat he turns and holds his hand out to her to shake, “Colin.”

            “Hello Colin, very nice to meet you again,” she responds, shaking his hand.

Eventually Sawyer and Colin sit down on the paved deck, leaning against a structural pillar of the veranda. They spend a while talking before Colin decides that he needs another drink. He offers to get Sawyer one but she declines, knowing that she doesn’t have a very high tolerance. To have a tolerance would mean to drink and she wasn’t really in the habit of leaving her house. He comes back with two glasses regardless and Sawyer sighs, taking one of them.

            “Someone is on a run for soda, but until then it’s just straight liquor,” Colin states, crinkling his nose. Sawyer is remembering him more and more, but still hasn’t pinpointed which class it was she knows him from. She looks into the cups and sees that they have a thin layer of brown liquid on the bottom. She smells it and it’s something woody. She reluctantly offers Colin her Diet Coke and he smiles, splitting what’s left of the can evenly into the two glasses.

            Sawyer takes a small sip, testing the waters. The liquor taste is still strong, but the sweetness of the Diet Coke has taken over enough of the flavor to make it stomachable. She takes another sip, trying to remember how her father had instructed her to test if a drink had been drugged. She thinks she remembers him saying that if a drink tastes too salty it’s likely been roofied. Sawyer doesn’t believe meek Colin could drug her if he’d wanted to.

            Another sip.

            “Thanks for the mixer, it was desperately needed,” Colin says laughing, tipping his cup towards Sawyer’s.

            “Any time, Colin.” She stares into the bottom of the glass, wondering why it was so easy to say these kinds of pointless things. Regardless, she’s in love with the way that the alcohol refuses to let her take back the smile she has plastered on her face.

            “So what brings you here?” he asks, grinning toothily over at her, leaning his head back against the column. She takes another sip, debated on telling him the truth and then decided that ultimately it was too uncool to say that her dad, Captain Sawyer, had forced her to go. She glances into the cup. She couldn’t have been at the party for longer than an hour so far and yet she was two tequila shots and half a mixed drink in.

            It’s then that Sawyer begins to wonder what time it is, how soon she’s going to have to force Colin to leave her alone so that she can sober up enough to walk home. Not that she’s drunk yet, but something tells her that even the slightest amount of buzzed is too much when walking home from a party like this in a town like this.

            Her smile feels a little more glued on now, like an obvious mask.

            “The fun of it?” she asks, unconvincing.

            Colin chuckles, “Now, why don’t I believe that this is your idea of fun.”

            She shrugs, “Can’t knock it ‘til you try it, right?”

            “Right,” he says, nodding sluggishly. Sawyer is suddenly aware of how much more he’s drank. How many shots did he have before she’d arrived. Was he about to leave when he spotted her? Is that why he was in the front lawn? Why would he stay?

            She takes another small sip, wondering how much longer she can make it last if she takes a drink for every awkward silence. Another team of chicken players go down and stay under the water for an uncomfortable amount of time.

            “Is that really safe?” Colin asks, eyebrows pushing together.

“Probably not,” Sawyer says, but there were worse ways to die. The smile doesn’t exist anymore as she’s reminded of palpable heat and the rattle of an explosion. “What time is it?”

Colin glances at his wrist. “It’s almost ten.”

            Sawyer was hoping it was later than that. She thinks about the twenty-dollar bill at the bottom of her purse just waiting to be spent on greasy diner food. There’s another splash in the pool and a lot of loud curse words. Almost two hours. She’d been with this boy for almost two hours.

            Two hours of fun is enough, right?

            She starts mapping out the best way to get to the nearest twenty-four-hour diner in her head. Colin is saying something to her, but she can’t be bothered to pay any attention to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Panic at the Disco, yeah!
> 
> Also, this took forever! I just got into an 'ew, who wants to edit' slump that was particularly difficult to get back out of. I hope you enjoy, I promise to try to better on the whole posting regularly front!
> 
> Exclamation points!


	6. I'm not as think as you drunk I am

            Colin waves his hand in front of Sawyer’s face and she blinks herself back into reality. She didn’t realize how long she’d been mapping out her plans silently in her head.

            “Earth to Sawyer,” he laughs and his face is the kind of face that collapses and squishes when it’s happy. She swats his hand away. She doesn’t laugh. He stops laughing too. “What’s wrong? Did I say something?” he asks, scrambling to come up with some reason that he could have possibly upset her.

            Sawyer downs the rest of her drink and stands, feeling the Earth tilt just the tiniest bit. She decides she is going to drink more in the future. If she was going to show up at things like this, she’d need to be able to handle more than what was probably only four shots in total. It’s either drink more or drink never and she hadn’t fully decided which yet. Colin stands beside her, stabilizing her, grabbing her shoulder. Sawyer thinks about the knife she has in her purse.

            Where _was_ her purse?

            “Where the fuck is my purse?” she asks, putting a hand against Colin’s chest. He’s getting closer. Sawyer can read the expression on his face as worried, but that doesn’t stop her from being annoyed. She wants to shove him away. She wants to yell. She wants to find her damned purse.

            She’s about to shove Colin when he’s pulled away from her roughly. And then immediately punched in the face. There was a flurry of fists that was too fast for Sawyer to fully comprehend and then there was a call of “Fight!” She was immediately shoved out of the way and found herself stumbling over a small bag on the ground. Her purse.

            There was no way it’d been sitting there that whole time. She wasn’t sober, but she wasn’t _that_ drunk. Regardless, she picked it up and slung it over her shoulder before pulling out the bottle of water that was still resting at the bottom. She allowed herself to get pushed to the background as she took a drink and then another, relishing how good the water felt after the harsh yet sickly sweet taste of her whiskey and Diet Coke.

            “Sawyer,” a distinctively British voice called and then a hand was wrapping itself around her upper arm, pulling her further back from the fray, “what the heck is going on?”

            “You tell me,” she mumbled, shrugging, refusing to look the Brit in the eye. She took another sip of water. Things were starting to make a little more sense. A laugh erupted from the center of the fight and it rose above all the yelling. Michael.

            “Well, _you_ were texting Michael,” Gavin started, but the way he’d said Michael’s name made Sawyer giggle and forced him to pause and look at her disapprovingly from behind his shades. She wondered if he had a pair for every occasion, if he carried more than one pair at once. She wondered if he wore the glasses to hide his eyes or the size of his nose. Something about his demeanor just felt too flippant for a reason some badass reason. “What?” he asked, and she giggled again at how thick his accent was. Gavin’s mouth tilted into a frustrated line.

            There was a splash as someone fell hard into the pool. Michael wasn’t giggling anymore. Gavin and Sawyer both turned toward where the fight had been happening, but neither of them could see him there anymore.

            “My boy,” Gavin yelled, shoving his way through the crowd. Before Gavin could make it too far, however, there was more splashing and Michael’s distinctive giggle. “Michael,” Gavin squawked, standing over the pool’s edge, but Michael was already climbing back out of the pool.

            “Maybe it’s time for you to leave,” some girl said. Sawyer wondered if it was her house or if she was just the kind of person who gets off on taking control of already handled situations and telling people what to do.

            Michael just laughed louder. Sawyer could see him wrapping his arm around Gavin’s shoulders, despite Gavin trying desperately to shove him off and making small noises of disapproval towards his soaked friend.

            “Don’t worry, I was already on my way out,” Michael said, saluting somebody standing near the edges of the crowd before his eyes met Sawyer’s and the goofy grin he’d been sporting disappeared. Instead a grimace took over his face as he narrowed his eyes and pointed at her and then jerked his thumb in the direction of the front yard where he was heading.

            Sawyer sighed, briefly wondering if she should just ignore him, but then followed regardless. After all, he’d started a brawl because Colin was too close and too concerned, she figured he’d do worse should he feel the need. And that was the kind of reassurance she wanted on her walk to the diner. Her stomach growled, thinking about the half dinner she’d eaten earlier.

            Michael and Gavin were waiting in the front lawn having a quiet conversation that Sawyer had no desire to actually hear. She hovered on the outskirts, too busy wondering if it was going to become a normal occurrence, allowing her enemy to boss her around. That was, if Michael and the Fakes he was running with were still the enemy.

            “You,” Michael said, anger lacing the single syllable in a way that surprised Sawyer. He was pointing at Sawyer and had taken a step towards her. “What were you thinking showing up at a place like this?”

            Sawyer tried to keep a straight face, but found it almost too ridiculous that he was calling her out for something this stupid. She couldn’t help it, though, she laughed and wondered if this was what her dad had had in mind when he’d told her to go and have fun. Drinking too much and hanging out with gang members. She doubled over, finding it hard to breathe.

            Michael’s eyes widened, eyebrows raised, “Are you drunk?”

            “No!” Sawyer said, too loudly, straightening out just to stumble a little over a step. She stopped, rebalanced, took in the two standing before her. Gavin had his hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets, face unreadable behind the mask that were his sunglasses. _That_ must be why he wears them. Michael looked like he was getting more and less angry at the same time somehow. “That would be – that would just be idiotic!” She said, laughing with a hand to her face.

            “You’re telling me,” Michael groaned, coming close enough to hold onto Sawyer’s wrist and lead her to the sidewalk, farther from the pounding music of the party. “What are you doing here?” He asked, eyebrows shoved together, close enough to search her face while she thought.

Once again, Sawyer debates telling the truth.

            “Honest answer or better answer?” she asks before repositioning her arm so that he was holding her hand instead of her wrist. She started pulling him along the sidewalk before he could respond.

            “Honest answer,” Michael sighed.

            “Where are we going?” Gavin asked.

            “This diner, I’m starving,” Sawyer said, then turned to Michael slightly, “My dad told me he wasn’t going to bust this party and that I needed to have fun tonight.”

            “Your dad,” Michael stated flatly, unimpressed, “Captain Sawyer?”

            She just nodded. It was always weird when people referred to her dad as Captain Sawyer or Mr. Sawyer or Officer Sawyer, because she had always gone by Sawyer, despite her first name being Annabelle. Annabelle just seemed too cutesy for her to find it fitting.

            “The diner is maybe half a mile in this direction,” Sawyer directed, pointing down a road where half of the streetlights had been blown out. Michael just nodded, obviously still puzzling over why Captain Sawyer would send his daughter to such a rowdy party and forgetting that he had driven to the party and they’d just left his car behind.

            When they got to the diner Gavin slid into one side of the booth and Michael forced Sawyer to scoot into the inside of the other, sitting beside her to block her from leaving. Sawyer asked the waitress for water and a plate of fries the first chance she got.

            “What were _you_ doing at the party, Mr. Judgmental?” Sawyer asked, turning in the booth so that her back faced the window and her legs were drawn up against her chest in the small space between them on the seat.

            “I finally got a text back from you, but turns out it was just some drunk girl who’d taken your purse,” Michael stated, annoyance flaring in his voice. “How much did you drink? I didn’t think you were the type to lose your purse so easily.” There was more and more judgement in his tone the more he spoke.

            “Well, Colin gave me two shots of tequila,” Sawyer started, wondering if she should lie to make herself look like less of a lightweight. These two probably drank nonstop. “And then some mixed drink.”

            “What, you were drugged?” Gavin asked, taking his sunglasses off and setting them down on the table just as the waitress came back with three waters and a large plate of fries. Sawyer thanked the waitress and then shook her head at Gavin. She shoved a couple of fries into her mouth before giving him any actual answer, though.

            “No, I’m small,” Sawyer said, just a little bit defensive, “and I don’t drink often.”

            Michael shook his head, grabbing a couple fries for himself. “Yeah, okay, well drink your water.” He nudged Sawyer’s glass of water closer to her and she obediently took a sip.

            “You never really explained why you were at the party,” Sawyer reminded, moving the cup around on the table, widening the puddle that it was sitting in.

            “Yes I did.”

            “No, you said I texted you, which doesn’t explain why you showed up at the party and beat up my friend,” Sawyer said, stretching the truth just a little when she referred to Colin as her friend. He’d certainly treated her as one. It wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t handle her liquor as well as she thought she could.

            Michael scoffed, “That kid was not your friend.”

            “How would you know?” Sawyer shot back. She wasn’t sure how or why, but Michael had a way of pushing her buttons. She glanced up to see Gavin messing around on his phone, ignoring the whole situation. It became very obvious that he was only there to back Michael up.

            Michael didn’t respond for a while, and then finally said in one rushed breath, “I was at the party because the girl using your phone was too drunk and I got worried.”

            “Aww, you care about me,” Sawyer cooed, poking Michael’s cheek, forgetting for a second that he could be dangerous. She wondered how periodically she could forget that he ran with the Fakes now, that he was one of them, that he couldn’t really be on her side ever again. She wondered how many times she could think that he’d ever been on her side. The realization hit her hard enough to form a rock in the pit of her stomach. Sawyer took a long drink of her icy water in an attempt to recover.

            “Whatever,” Michael growled, then turned to face Sawyer slightly, letting an arm drape over the back of the booth they were sitting on. “Whatever, we needed to talk anyway.”

            Sawyer rolled her eyes and shook her head, “No, we really, _really_ don’t.”

            “We do, Sawyer,” he stated, struggling to keep his voice at an acceptable level, “we really, really do.”

            She sighed, shoving a fry angrily into her mouth and nearly missing. She felt like giggling and scowled instead, telling herself she wasn’t going to drink ever again. Anything that made her some giggly teenage girl was something she wanted to stay far away from. Besides, Michael was right, how’d she let some other girl walk off with her purse? It seemed like an impossible concept.

            “There’s a list, Sawyer, and Jaime Walters was on it,” Michael stated. Sawyer raised an eyebrow as if to ask how this was important, remembering the day he regretted bringing it up in the coffee shop. Maybe this time he would actually explain why it mattered. Maybe this time he had permission. “And so were you,” Michael said, like he felt he shouldn’t really have to say it, like Sawyer was stupid for not catching on.

            “So?” Sawyer asked, “If the Fakes took Jaime because she was on some list and I’m on the same list, but I’m sitting here with you, now, then where’s the problem?” She said waving a fry around in the air as she spoke. Drunk logic was always bulletproof.

            “Wait, you think _we_ took Jaime?” Gavin asked, incredulous enough to pull his eyes up from his cell phone, “That’s ridiculous!”

            Sawyer rolled her eyes.

            “We’ve been over this, the Fakes had nothing to do with that,” Michael said, groaning in a way that verged on being a whine. “It wasn’t the real Vagabond, not that the Vagabond is strictly a Fake, despite what the news says,” Michael was talking in a low hum now, fast, worried that he’d be overheard. Every now and then his eyes darted up to take in the room again. “And I can prove that it wasn’t us because when Jaime’s video aired the Fakes tried to save her. They – we – were too late.”

            Sawyer nodded, trying to take him seriously, unsure of what the point of lying so insistently would be. She tried to force her face into something serious, but could feel her lips screwing into a grin, “Why would the Fakes try to help Jaime?” Why does it care what she thinks?

            “Geoff has some deal with the mayor, we don’t ask questions,” Gavin mumbled, flicking his wrist out and then going back to focusing on his phone. Obviously, this situation was too boring for him.

            “Yeah, that deal no longer exists,” Michael said flippantly, waving off Gavin’s comment.

            “I wonder why,” Sawyer responded dryly, picking up another fry.

            “Yeah.” He pushed the plate away from her in an attempt to regain eye contact. Sawyer glared up at him in response. “Do you believe me?”

            Sawyer shrugged, pulling the plate back towards her forcefully before breaking eye contact again. “Why does it matter?”

When Michael didn’t answer right away she glanced back over at him, “There were other people on this list, right? Why don’t you go explain this shit to them?” She was positive that she could fend for herself. Besides, even if the Fakes weren’t behind the attack at the school – which was something she’d have to actually wrap her head around yet – that still didn’t mean that she was okay with befriending a gang.

            They were still a gang.

            They were still murderers – criminals.

            They were still dangerous.

            “What time is it?” Sawyer asked, downing the rest of her water.

            “Quarter past eleven,” Gavin responded, setting his phone down, but not turning it off. Sawyer noticed that he wasn’t reading something or playing a game, he was watching a video. A video of something that looked an awful lot like a CCTV. She remembered who she was sitting across from and decided that that’s exactly what it was. “What about this, you get a million dollars, but you have to use public restrooms for the rest of your life.”

            Michael sighed, letting his head loll back briefly before rolling it back down to look at Gavin. “Would you have to use them for just the bathroom or for anything you’d go into the bathroom for?” Sawyer raised an eyebrow at Michael, thoroughly confused by this change in conversation and how smoothly Michael was just going along with it, despite looking extraordinarily frustrated by it.

            “What do you do in the bathroom that isn’t using it?” Gavin asked, giggling in a way that sounded a little strangled.

            “Well, there’s a mirror in there, Gav.”

            Sawyer decided to embrace it, at least they weren’t talking about the Fakes anymore, “What if you’re just washing your hands? Would you have to walk to a gas station?”

            Gavin laughed again, clarifying the question. “Yeah, bathrooms no longer exist in convenient places, only gas stations and shops and the like.”

“Eh, just hang a mirror and use the kitchen sink,” Sawyer shrugged, flicking a fry in Michael’s direction when he shook his head at her.

“What, you’ll just never shower?” Michael asked. Sawyer shrugged, again. Michael laughed, “Fucking gross, Sawyer.”

They went on like that, Gavin asking ridiculous questions about scenarios none of them would ever actually be put into, and then the three of them debating what the scenario entailed exactly, how they would proceed should they have to. For a second she could ignore Michael’s bruised knuckles. For a second she could pretend they weren’t Fakes.

And, for a second, it almost felt like Sawyer had friends again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm bad at updating. 
> 
> Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time - Panic! at the Disco


	7. Too much, too late, or just not enough

Sawyer doesn’t get home until one in the morning. When she walks quietly through the back door, she sees her father waiting up for her in the living room. He’s got a case file open on his lap and bags under his eyes and Sawyer starts to feel bad that she didn’t insist on walking home earlier.

“Have fun?” he asks, warry.

Sawyer nods, heads for the stairs and then turns back and holds her hand out towards her dad, “Just to be clear, did you send me there thinking I would get drunk?”

Her dad shrugged, grinning with half his face, “Was there a small part of me that hoped you’d call and I’d have to come get you and knock some sense into some drunk kids? Maybe.”

“And, just to be clear, were you waiting up for me?” she asks, motioning to the flimsy file he was holding, the muted TV playing an infomercial.

Her dad shrugged again, grin falling, “Was I worried at all that I should have just told you to see a movie instead?” He closes the file on his lap and Sawyer catches a capital J and a capital W. “Maybe.”

“Well, I’m home,” she said smiling, trying to be as reassuring as possible. “Good night, Dad,” she adds before going upstairs and falling heavily into bed, not bothering to even take off her shoes.

Monday the entire school was abuzz with gossip from the party, the fact that it had happened at all given the sudden overprotectiveness of parents in the area seemed to be a miracle in and of itself. It was remarkable in a few other ways, but mostly in that Michael had shown up swinging, starting a fight that no one understood over the weird girl who literally no one had thought would show up. Sawyer spent the day ducking into empty hallways and sitting in the backs of classrooms, avoiding curious eyes and questions.

“Crazy party, right?” Michael’s distinctive voice called from down the hall before she could slip into her next classroom. He was trying to put on a valley girl accent but failed miserably.

Sawyer chuckled, relieved that it was him rather than, well, anybody else in this stupid school. At least she knew how to handle him. She was less well-versed in rumors. “We’re not friends, remember.”

“Aw, don’t be like that,” Michael said, shoving her shoulder playfully.

“What are you even doing here, didn’t you drop out?” Sawyer asked, raising a brow at him.

Michael shrugged, “Still gotta graduate.”

“Sure,” she drawled, wondering what part of the criminal lifestyle required a diploma. “Are you gonna stalk me now?” she asked, putting some books into her locker, ignoring the pictures of her and Andrea that hung on the inside of the door. She still couldn’t bear to take them down, though.

“I mean,” Michael said, giggling a little, “define stalking.” She glanced at him, suddenly beyond angry that she’d forgiven him so easily.

Sawyer shook her head and slammed her locker shut. She’d just briefly forgotten why she had to hate him, but the memory of Andrea was enough to jog her mind. She pointed at him, “That, right there, was answer enough. Back off.” Sawyer took off down the hall towards her next class.

It took Michael a second to shake off the confusion and follow her. His longer legs meant that he caught up quickly, though.

“Listen,” he said, putting a hand out to stop her. She shoved it back, glaring at him. He glared back. “Listen, I have to stick around, okay. I have to make sure that, well, _it_ , doesn’t happen to you.” She spared him half a glance, still moving quickly down the hall. He seemed almost apologetic. It was almost enough. If he was telling the truth it meant he was only trying to protect her, which was generally an idea she could get behind.

“Follow someone else on that list,” she scoffed, reminding herself over and over again that he was a Fake now, “I’m fine.” 

Michael groaned, moving to get ahead of her and cut her off, “I’m not doubting how fine you are, Sawyer.” She almost stopped, wondered what gave him such faith in her, but took longer strides to avoid him instead. If she stopped she’d listen and if she listened she’d forget. The classroom was in sight.

“Then why follow me like a lost puppy?” she asked, glaring at him sharply before walking through the door to her classroom.

Then an idea struck her.

What if he wasn’t watching her because he wanted to or felt the need to, but because he was asked to. She stalled in the doorway and lowered her voice, “Did Ramsey ask you to? Did he sic you on me? Is that what this is?”

Michael didn’t answer right away, unable to make eye contact. It was answer enough. Sawyer scoffed again, shaking her head and walking further into the classroom.

“Hey, either way, I want to make sure you’re safe,” he said, rounding on her desk as she sat down at it. He stood in front of her, hands planted firmly against the desk.

Sawyer rolled her eyes, annoyed, “Why do either of you care?”

Michael stalled again, “Well…”

She read between the lines. Jaime was the mayor’s daughter. They’d had a deal with the mayor. If Sawyer was on that same list there had to be a reason. There had to be a reason the Fakes bothered to care.

“You have a deal with my dad too?” she asked, almost forgetting to keep her voice down. She was almost too angry to care.

“No, no, of course not, no,” Michael assured quickly, eyes widened. He was jumping through all of her hoops and she was on edge to find out why. She jumped when the bell rang. To her immense pleasure, Michael jumped too. He glared back at the old-fashioned bell on the wall before turning back to Sawyer, “But the last thing we need is the full force of the LSPD coming down on us, you know?”

She’d been so close to just believing he cared.

“Oh, right, yeah,” she growled, hiding her hurt with anger, “because that makes me feel loads better. Thanks.”

“Listen Sawyer, it’s-” Michael started, but was abruptly cut off by Mrs. Sanders, who, as always, was eager to begin her class.

“Mr. Jones, how nice of you to grace us with your presence,” she stated, haughty, “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

Michael scowled down at Sawyer’s desk before quickly replacing it with a charming smile and turning to face the front of the room. “My apologies, I guess I’ll be leaving now.” He turned back to Sawyer with a look that conveyed that he was far from done with this conversation. “Sawyer,” he said, nodding slightly before sauntering out of the room.

“Oh, don’t leave on my account,” Mrs. Sanders called after him sarcastically. A few of her pupils chuckled, but Mrs. Sanders was already transitioning into how to do a matrix by hand.

Sawyer had a hard time paying attention, too busy worrying about how she would avoid Michael for the rest of the day and possibly for the rest of her life. Leaving for her next class, however, she quickly realized that he wouldn’t be the only person she’d be dodging until graduation at the very earliest.

Colin’s dark shock of hair floated above the heads of other students, giving Sawyer just enough forewarning of his approach to duck back into Mrs. Sander’s classroom, pressing flat against the wall.

“Problem of the criminal type or the boy type?” Mrs. Sanders asked flatly, barely looking up from her desk where she was grading assignments.

“Take your pick,” Sawyer sighed, hearing Michael’s high-pitched laughter fill the hall.

“Long time no see,” Michael taunted and Sawyer groaned, inching further into the room along the wall.

“Yeah, sure,” Colin called back, tone laced heavily with a sarcasm that Sawyer appreciated. He’d been punched by the powerhouse that was Michael only a few days beforehand but still mustered the balls to taunt the boy right back.

_That kid was not your friend_. Michael’s words from Friday night echoed in Sawyer’s brain. At the time she’d assumed Michael was just talking out of his ass, it wouldn’t be that far out of character for him. Now, Michael throwing insults back at Colin in the hall, Sawyer had to wonder if there really had been more to it that she’d missed. Why keep up the pretense otherwise?

She glanced up at Mrs. Sanders, wondering how exactly she was ever going to get out of this classroom. Michael already knew she was in there, he’d most likely been watching the door, and Colin more than likely had seen her slip back in as he approached, tall fucking mutant that he was.

“I’m not at all recommending the fire escape,” Mrs. Sanders deadpanned, pointing with her pen towards the fire escape door to her left. Sawyer glanced between her and the door, before deciding to just go with it.

“Thanks,” she whispered, slipping out as silently as one can slip out onto a rickety fire escape. The metal groaned beneath her feet and she tried to ignore how similar this felt to a previous escape.

And with that Sawyer was skipping class for the first time in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You Know What They Do to Guys Like Me In Prison by My Chemical Romance
> 
> Also I'm so, so, so, so, so, (ad infinitum) so sorry. I kind of dropped everything I was doing in life and picked up a ton of other crap and this was one of the things that I dropped. The good news is that this is a finished story, I just haven't edited the last few chapters. The bad news is that for some reason my Office Word has decided that I can't edit any of my documents... so I'm going to have to find a way to actually edit the last few chapters. 
> 
> I'm gonna go ahead and immediately post another chapter as an apology! I'm sorry for any errors, I know this isn't the best edited story out there.


	8. We were never supposed to make it half this far

Graduation was close enough to be practically tangible. Sawyer had applied to colleges. Colleges that were far away from the hell that was her home city. She applied to colleges in New York City, colleges in the middle of nowhere Iowa, colleges in Texas, in Alaska, in Montana, in Alabama. She paid fee after fee to any school that wasn’t in Los Santos.

        She got back letter after letter of congratulations.

        She got back so many that she made a mural on her bedroom wall, pinning them all up in rows. Blocks and blocks of acceptance letters to different schools with different programs and different people. A different setting for a different Sawyer and each one was a new opportunity.

        There was no way to pick just one.

        When her dad knocked on her bedroom door, Sawyer was sitting in front of that wall, throwing darts and imagining her life if she were to pick the school that it landed on. She’d never realized how good it felt to have options. How open. How terrifying.

        “How does pizza sound?” he asked.

        Sawyer shruged, “Frozen or delivery?”

        “I was thinking homemade,” he stated. Sawyer craned her neck to look at her dad who was leaning in the doorway to her bedroom. He was smiling, but cooking was her mother’s thing and they hadn’t bothered with the time-consuming process of making their own pizza since she’d left. When she didn’t respond right away her dad read her mind. “It’s a special occasion,” he explained, shrugging and then pushing himself back from the door frame and down the hall

        “What kind of special occasion?” she called after him, falling backwards against her bed.

        “Deacon’s coming over,” her dad yelled back from the bottom of the stairs, and then after a pause, “and you’re graduating and leaving me alone forever.”

        “Overdramatic,” she yelled, rolling off of the bed and putting on clothes that weren’t sweatpants and a tank top.

        Deacon was one of her dad’s old friends. They’d been partners before Sawyer had even been born; she’d grown up seeing him as an uncle. He’d been distant lately, though, and her dad had mentioned that he was heading up some investigations on gang activity. It was arguably one of the most dangerous assignments you could get around here, but Deacon was good at his job and wouldn’t have it any other way.

        Sawyer made her way downstairs, peeking into the living room and then into the kitchen, where her dad was kneading out dough. “How are you going to make pizza dough? It’s already five,” she asked, coming up behind him and peeking around his shoulder.

        “It’s some pre-made stuff,” he mumbled, concentrating on getting the dough to the right consistency, “Betty Crocker, just add water – I think.” He picked the plastic bag it had come out of up, doubting himself, and read the steps on the back again. Sawyer briefly thought about offering to help, but decided against it, that way when it inevitably failed and they called for delivery it wasn’t in any way her fault.

        “Hey Pipsqueak, what’s up?” Deacon’s familiar deep voice sounded from close behind her. Sawyer jumped and her father turned around, laughing.

        “Didn’t hear you come in,” she said, holding a hand to her beating heart and laughing a little, the kind of laugh that you don’t entirely mean.

        Deacon shrugged, his wide shoulders rising and falling in a way that helps put Sawyer at ease. He was her second dad, her mother’s replacement on bad days. She doesn’t bother telling him to not call her Pipsqueak, to point out its demeaning nature. Instead she hugged him, trying to wrap her arms all the way around him, though he was built like a brick wall - too wide and too tall for Sawyer’s small frame to encompass.

        He ruffled her hair and she pulled back to punch him in the shoulder as hard as she could. It’s a game of theirs. Between her dad and Deacon, Sawyer had grown up confident in her ability to fight. Deacon pulled her back, spinning her so that her back is flush with his chest, and hugged her against him. She could feel the vibrations in his chest as he laughed, happy with his victory.

        “I let you win,” Sawyer stated, and it wasn’t really true or false. While she hadn’t bother trying, that didn’t mean that she would have won.

        “Sure, of course,” he said and she heard the familiar, warm smile in his voice.

        “What do you both want on the pizza?” her dad asked, still fiddling with the dough. He was trying to flatten it onto a pan, but every time he stretched it, it pulled right back into the ball.

        The pizza, somehow, turned out delicious, though. Just as good as her mother’s might have been, which Deacon points out only to be met back with an awkward silence.

        “So, how are classes, Pipsqueak?” he asked quickly, trying a different approach.

        Sawyer shrugged.

        “She’s hanging with the wrong crowd, Deacon, I think we should be worried,” her dad answered for her, poking fun at his daughter.

        Deacon seemed interested, the joking nature of her dad’s response appearing to have gone over his head, “Oh, should we now? Who you hanging with? The Lost?”

        “Ha ha,” Sawyer said without humor, rolling her eyes at the two men, “You’re both hilarious. And for your information I have successfully evaded _that Jones boy_ all year and I feel as though I should be praised for it as it was not an easy task.” Sawyer kept her eyes on her food, but she grinned. It was true that Michael still followed her around from time to time, but it was also true that she didn’t have any other friends to speak of either.

        After poking and prodding and making a few more jokes they dropped the subject of school and start talking about work and about their good old days.

        After dinner it became increasingly apparent to Sawyer that tonight was just a rouse. Deacon wasn’t there to celebrate her impending graduation, but to discuss cases with her dad. The pizza was probably just to appease her, to have a family meal that for once feels like a family meal. Her dad’s cunning ploy to try to keep her in the city. _It sure is nice to be all together like this_ , he was saying. It was all implied.

        Sawyer sighed, going back to her room to throw darts at her wall with just a little bit more guilt weighing down her decisions. She only had so much longer to decide.

 

 

What Sawyer had expected to feel the night before her graduation day was pride, hope, and maybe even a little anxiety or nerves. She’d expected to toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep, thinking through every detail that she would need to pull off the next morning. She’d expected to sleep hard, maybe dream about packing for college. She’d settled on a school in the middle of South Dakota. The furthest from Los Santos she could imagine.

        Besides, they had a decent computer science program.

        For South Dakota.

        What Sawyer didn’t expect to feel the night before her graduation day was terror. Full on and flat out horror at what was happening around her.

        Yet there she was.

        Her eyes followed the man pacing before her, taking in every little thing she could. All the while she cursed Michael out in her head. Of all the time he had spent lightly stalking her, all of the excuses he’d spewed for the Fakes, all of the reassurances he’d tried to give her, she was still here, staring down the Vagabond while sat in front of a camera.

        The camera’s red light winked at her every now and then, reminding her that it was, in fact, running. There were several zip ties holding both her arms down to the metal chair she was sat in, several more around her ankles, two at awkward angles around her knees. Her torso had been duct taped to the back of the chair.

        Despite the fact that she hadn’t been gagged in any way, Sawyer refused to speak. It was what he wanted. It was what _they_ wanted.

        There were two large pieces of poster board set up next to the camera, words like _First come, first serve_ , typed out and plastered onto them. She refused to read them aloud. It was a trap, just as Jaime’s kidnapping had been a trap. She’d overheard Deacon explaining to her father how many officers died trying to get the girl back.

        Sawyer didn’t want them to die trying to get to her.

        Somewhere deep down she was hoping that the Vagabond had just lost his marbles, something that it seemed he was very capable of doing. She hoped that this wasn’t the Fakes, that he’d just broken off and was doing his own thing, causing chaos. Most of all she hoped that Michael wasn’t made of just hollow and broken promises.

        The Vagabond, behind that impenetrable black skull mask, growled. He stopped pacing, facing Sawyer in what should have been a menacing motion, but she almost wanted to laugh. Since she’d gotten here the worst thing that had happened was that a zip tie had been pulled a little too close to her wrist for comfort. A papercut compared to what was possible.

        “Why won’t you just read the damned thing?” he said in a low, frustrated rumble. It seemed obvious that he was modulating his voice, making it harder for her to identify him by it later. It gave her hope that he was going to actually allow her to leave the room at some point.

        Sawyer thought about just reading the words.

        The possibility that this was the Fakes and it was some sort of rouse that was not meant for her to get hurt during crossed her mind. They might not have told her to ensure that her acting was on par. She may have also just not answered a phone call containing some explanation. Sawyer could come up with a million explanations.

        She decided to assume that that’s what this was, at least for the time being. It was arguably an inadvisable route for anybody in her position.

        She raised an eyebrow at the Vagabond, looking him dead into the black mesh his eyes were hiding behind, and shrugged.

        He growled, then, and did something that Sawyer hadn’t expected. He punched her straight across the face hard enough to send the chair jerking off of the ground.

        Sawyer sputtered a little, tasting blood in her mouth. She blinked her eyes hard, deciding that this was definitely not a rouse set up by the Fakes. This was real. This was dangerous. Sawyer also decided that she didn’t care. While more painful, probably, playing tough seemed like a feasible option of survival to her in that moment.

        She turned her head back to glare at the Vagabond defiantly.

        He grabbed her chin hard and directed her face back towards the camera and the words he wanted so desperately for her to read. If she didn’t say anything, then they wouldn’t have a video. If they didn’t have a video, then they didn’t have a ransom.

        “This is live streaming, by the way,” the Vagabond said, laughing something terrible and high pitched, waving towards the camera and then turning back to Sawyer, inches from her face. “Say cheese?”

        Sawyer chuckled, she tried to make it sound unafraid, tried to convey how much none of this mattered to her. Sawyer realized in that moment that, thankfully, she was a good liar. “You’re just not as menacing in person as I thought you would be,” she says, clearly, still staring the Vagabond down. What she said was at least half true, she’d honestly thought that the presence of the Vagabond this close to her would inspire some kind of intense terror or hatred or anger, but mostly she was just annoyed and amused by the irony. Weeks before she planned to get out of this godforsaken hellhole, she gets kidnapped by this asshole on her way home from a food run for her dad. Besides, he hadn’t done much yet to inspire any real fear.

        At the very least, should she not make it out of this alive, this last remnant of who she was will either infuriate her father or make him proud. She could be at peace with that. It made it easier to be strong.

        The Vagabond decided that her first words were not acceptable. He hit her again, hard, across the face. Hard enough to break her nose, the sickening crunch making Sawyer lose her composure for a few seconds. She was determined to remain apathetic, though, above the whole ordeal. He hit her hard in the gut and she forgot how to breathe for a second.

        While she figured it back out he turned to face the camera, crouching somewhat so that he was framed nicely.

        “She was supposed to tell you how much time you all have. I mean, you all know the drill by now, I don’t have to explain this shit to you,” he said. His too fake, too low, too gravelly voice filled the space and Sawyer was again struck by how wrong it all felt. This just wasn’t what she’d expected, and she _had_ expected something after the months of Michael hounding her on the subject. “She was supposed to get twelve hours but now she has three. As usual, first come first served. Good luck.” He stepped forward and turned off the camera, knocking it to the ground before rounding on Sawyer again.

        “You ready to have some fun?” he asked, and for the first time since he’d opened his mouth, Sawyer was actually and entirely afraid of the man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Young and Menace by Fall Out Boy
> 
> This is the last chapter that I currently have edited and I'm having a hard time finding back ups, but I promise I'm not gonna abandon this story again...


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